Thursday, May 29, 2008

Thousands of Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen from U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard ships were in town for Fleet Week New York.

Hosted nearly every year since 1984, Fleet Week New York is the City's celebration of the sea services. This annual event also provides an opportunity for the citizens of New York City and the surrounding Tri-State area to meet Sailors, Marines and Coast Guardsmen.

Fleet Week included dozens of military demonstrations and displays throughout the week, as well as public visitation of many of the participating ships.

More than 60,000 citizens visited ships during this 21st anniversary of Fleet Week.

It also includes a lot of attractive, young Naval sailors wearing their dress whites in bars all over Manhattan. The dress whites do for them what flame-resistant overalls and suspenders do for firemen.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

As I type, Tasha is attending the red carpet premiere of Sex and the City: The Movie at Radio City Music Hall. And while our clique is living vicariously through her "Stars and the City" night, we know that a Carrie-lifestyle on a Carrie-paycheck is a far cry from the fantasy that drives 20-somethings to New York in droves. Hell - I wouldn't be honest with myself if I didn't admit that the HBO series didn't add kindling to my blazing New York City fire when I was a college student living in North Carolina.

My friends and I shop at sample sales or hook each other up with the goodies and perks associated with our own careers. I have a box of cereal under my desk for lunch or I pack sandwiches during the week. We party in A- and B-list clubs only if we know the promoters hosting comped tables. Despite our decent upper-middle class incomes and jobs in the entertainment, fashion and publishing industries, even the cheapest bottle service is out of all of our budgets - if we plan to still make the rent. We pick brunch spots based on all-you-can-drink-for-under-$10 menus - not exactly the kind of places where you sip Veuve Cliquot mimosas next to ladies in floppy, widebrimed hats. And don't get me started on how we cram our lives into a modest amount of square footage at outrageous prices.

From amNY.com:Cast members yesterday conceded that they were familiar with the critique that "Sex and the City" helped launch these changes by drawing out-of-towners hell bent on living the life at all cost. High-priced designer labels and extravagant lifestyles have been as much a part of the series as its four female stars -- Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon.Nixon, for her part, is all too familiar with these bright-eyed girls. "When people come up to me on the street and say, 'I just got here from Iowa two weeks ago. Your show made me come. I'm like, 'Oh no,'" said Nixon, who plays reprising Miranda Hobbes. "People do come here looking for love, but what do they find?"Quite possibly bad luck in love, cramped apartments, shopping trips that don't include Fifth Avenue and life in a borough other than Manhattan.

Even a recent article in The New York Times was a reminder that Sex and the City: The Movie is a movie:Every year around this time, tens of thousands of postcollegiate people in their 20s flood the city despite its soaring expenses. They are high on ambition, meager of budget and endlessly creative when it comes to making ends meet.

Some tactics have long been chronicled: sharing tiny apartments with strangers. Sharing those apartments with eight strangers. Eating cheap lunches and skipping dinners — not just to save money, but so that drinks pack more of a punch and fewer need be consumed.

But there are smaller measures, no less ingenious, that round out the lifestyle. These young people sneak flasks of vodka into bars, flirt their way into clubs, sublet their walk-in closets, finagle their way into open-bar parties and put off haircuts until they visit their hometowns, even if those hometowns are thousands of miles away.Read more

But we keep on coming. Some leave, some barely get by, some make it. But I think few find that New York City will be something they would ever regret.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Terrence left on Saturday morning to spend a few days with his family in Atlanta before joining friends in Ohio to play on Kevin's Gus Macker team in Zanesville. But there was no time for me to be sad following the end of his two-week visit because I had Saturday afternoon coffee and shopping in Soho, Saturday night dinner plans at Wild Ginger in the West Village, Sunday afternoon brunch at Roberto Passon in Hell's Kitchen, and a Memorial Day Weekend harbor cruise Sunday evening with various combinations of my best girlfriends.

Dinner on Saturday with all the usuals was relatively tame, but attributable to all-you-can-drink mimosas, bellinis, bloody marys and screwdrivers at Sunday brunch, there now exists photo documentation of me holding my dress over my head amongst some young Naval sailors in Times Square. I would love to depict myself as truly outrageous and free-spirited, but for the benefit of accurate memorial recordkeeping, I have to add that we began our Sunday morning sunbathing in Central Park and I was wearing a string bikini under my dress. So it wasn't as bold as it may seem, but with or without the panties, either version is a shameless salute to Fleet Week.

To celebrate Iris' birthday, we rounded out Memorial Day Weekend with a harbor cruise around Manhattan, a hook-up courtesy of a good friend who was DJ'ing on a yacht. Later, we were joined by Ra, Debasha and two of Iris' old roommates at a comped table at Club Home with one of our favorite promoters.

On a Hudson River party cruise, featured below from left to right:Natasha (Natasha S., a newbie to NYC), Jackie (a new friend of Cassie's), Iris, me

Friday, May 23, 2008

Right now, I'm sitting in my cubicle outside of my boss's glass office listening to Counting Crows performing live some 20-odd floors below. Arriving to work a bit early this morning, I noticed "Good Morning America" prepping for the first Summer Concert Series of 2008 in Bryant Park.

Upstairs, I went into my boss's office and opened her large window overlooking the park. The sounds of the concert below are currently drifting onto our floor and the other executive assistants are bobbing their heads in the row of cubicles alongside mine.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Friends in the South feign disbelief when I tell them that I viewed an apartment with the bathtub in the kitchen when I first moved to New York in 2006. And one of many available now in 2008 ...

From newyork.craigslist.org:$1400 / 1br - East Village One Bedroom Available July 1st (East Village)This is a great one bedroom in the heart of the East Village - 6th Street btw 1st and 2nd Ave. Sort of funky, the tub is in the living room, but cute and a great space for a single person and/or student. Whomever rents this place will need to purchase the furniture already in the apartment (about $1500) and pay a finders fee to the current tenant. The furniture is all great quality (most of it from West Elm) and was originally purchased for about $4200. Please email me and I will send you the time/location for the open house.

From ardorny.com:E.58th/East Midtown 1-BR/1.0 Bath $1517. **Midtown East 50's**A 1BR close to fifteen hundred in a great location CONVENIENT to the 59th Street subway (4,5,6,N,R,and W trains), a row of restaurants, and much more. Lots of SUNLIGHT and views. Contact for viewings. To view actual property, please contact [information removed].

Unique Old NY Style Shower/Tub in the Kitchen

Real Estate LOLBecause all you can do is live with it, laugh at it or leave it.

"Unbelieveable Upper East Side value! Soaring Twelve foot high ceiling in main room. LARGE seperate kitchen with washed oak cabinetry (all new, and plenty of it!)" in York Avenue/Upper Eastside Studio/1.0 Bath $1325

The sad thing is ... they really aren't stretching the truth ... by Manhattan real estate-standards.

Real Estate LOLBecause all you can do is live with it, laugh at it or leave it.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

While I was in Atlanta last weekend, Debasha told me that my girlfriends kept saying there was an extra person in their party at various nightlife hotspots, and later Debasha realized they were counting me.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Card no. 42 - photos This walk combines a slice of New York history with a visit to one of Manhattan's least-known residential neighborhoods.

Begin at Edgecombe and 160th Street (M2 bus to Edgecombe and 160th Streets or C train to 163rd Street).The oldest private house in New York, the Morris-Jumel Mansion, sits on the hill overlooking the Harlem River, a position that recommended it as temporary headquarters for George Washington in 1776. Handsomely restored, with grounds that are especially pretty in spring and summer, the house is well worth the trek uptown. The entrance is on cobblestonedJumel Terrace, between West 160th and 152nd Streets, just east of St. Nicholas Avenue. Directly opposite is Sylvan Terrace, a charming row of painted wooden houses built in the early 20th century along the mansion's former carriageway. Turn right out of Sylvan Terrace to West 162nd Street, then right to the far side of Edgecombe Avenue for a glimpse of Yankee Stadium, just across the Harlem River. Walk south on Edgecombe to West 160th, turn right and walk to Broadway to visit the Hispanic Society, between West 155th and 156th Streets, a treasure house of Spanish and Portuguese art, and its neighbor, the American Academy of Arts and Letters (633 W. 155th). Continue south to Trinity Church's graveyard, the last cemetery in Manhattan to still accept tenants. Proceed farther south on Broadway to West 145h and turn left to Convent Avenue, then right into Hamilton Heights, a charming neighborhood of single-family houses that seem frozen in an earlier time. Return to Broadway along West 141st and pick up the 1 or 9 train to West 137th or 145th Street.From City Walks: New York: 50 Adventures on Foot by Martha Fay

Quotable NYC

"Courtney's early chitchats with me were not filled with that kind of insane intensity that really naive people have when they're fresh off the boat in New York ..."~ Alan Hunter, Former MTV VJ, of Courtney Cox, E! THS "Friends"

"One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years."~ Thomas Wolfe

"It would be childish of us to deny that our lives weren't changing. But for this night, none of us were going anywhere. That's the thing about really good friends and a really great Manhattan."~ Carrie, "Sex and the City"

More Quotable NYC

"In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you're told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is."~ Simon Hoggart

"I can't wait to get back to New York City where at least when I walk down the street, no one ever hesitates to tell me exactly what they think of me."~ Ani Difranco

“It’s not the meaning of life, Alfred, it’s the feeling of life. Look at that park down there! Just think of how many loves lost and found in it, how many first kisses kissed, how many Frisbees lost, and just remember that is your park, my friend. And you've got your whole life to walk though it.”~ Zak Orth to Freddie Prinze Jr. referring to Central Park in Down to You (2000)

"Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book - and does."~ Groucho Marx

"There's a spot in Central Park ... where if you sit there long enough, the entire city walks by."~ Matthew Perry to Salma Hayek in Fools Rush In (1997)